


the feeling isn't over

by fliptomybside



Category: Dunkirk (2017) RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 23:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13491801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fliptomybside/pseuds/fliptomybside
Summary: fionn's a junior. harry's about to graduate. they meet during their high school production of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead.





	the feeling isn't over

**Author's Note:**

> This got out of control preeeetty quickly. The first 1k or so was already posted on tumblr but I couldn't leave it there, so? Title from Bleachers - I Miss Those Days, unbeta-ed so all mistakes are mine, please don't let the real people that this is about see it, etc. etc.

Fionn not going to the cast party has nothing to do with whether or not Harry Styles goes. It has everything to do with the itch under his skin and how he knows getting high and climbing out onto the roof is the only thing that’ll scratch it. Harry might’ve put the itch there but Fionn knows they’re never going to speak to each other again, because that’s how these things go. It’s always heady at the beginning of a show and by the end everyone’s living in each other’s pockets and then when it’s over, it’s over. 

He shoves his costume, slightly damp with sweat from standing under the stage lights, into his locker. He could return it to the costume shop now. He probably should, because he has homework to do and it would be silly to take a trip to school tomorrow just to return it, but he can make a cleaner exit this way. Knock shoulders with Barry and Tom on his way out and get away with not saying anything.

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to sneak out,” Barry says in his ear, voice scratchy from the whoops he’d let out when the curtain went down for the last time and they’d run backstage. 

Fionn feels himself tense up and forces himself to relax, lets his shoulders fall incrementally.

“I’m not very sneaky,” he says, closing the locker with a bang and spinning around to face Barry, forcing a grin.

Barry’s mid-eye roll and he reaches out and puts his hands on Fionn’s shoulders. They’re almost exactly the same height and it makes it impossible for Fionn to look away. He’s got the weirdest face, Fionn thinks absently, it shouldn’t work but it does. Did, at least. Worked enough for Fionn to kiss him drunkenly almost exactly a year ago. They don’t talk about it.

“Fionnly,” he says, and Fionn winces at the nickname. 

Barry rolls his eyes again and tightens his grip on Fionn’s shoulders.

“What, is that name reserved for Styles?”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Fionn says, and he ducks, lets Barry’s hands fall off his shoulders and heads for the door, shoes squeaking on the tile. 

There are enough people in the locker room that Fionn can pretend he doesn’t hear Barry shouting after him. He gives out tight smiles and waves and slips out the side door of the auditorium to jog through the parking lot. There aren’t many people out, most of them still inside, trading the hugs and tears and roses that come with closing night. 

Fionn feels guilty for a split second that he’d insisted his parents not wait for him. He knows they’ll have tucked a card under his pillow at home, telling him their favorite parts and how proud they are and how this is just the beginning. He’ll feel even worse when he reads it, but everything about this show has gotten under his skin and he just wants to outrun it. Doesn’t want to remember it, doesn’t want to bask in the afterglow, just. Wants to leave it behind. 

It’s early enough in the spring that it’s still cool, but it’s lighter out than it was a month ago at this time, and it reminds Fionn that there is an end to this. 

Harry’s graduating. Leaving school. Probably the state, though Fionn’s tried not to look at the college acceptance wall for his name. He’s not sure which would be worse, Harry going or staying. 

He gets a stitch in his side halfway home and slows to a walk, tripping a little before his feet find a rhythm again. The cool air settles against his skin and for a vicious second Fionn lets him think about the last time Harry touched him. How it wasn’t even a kiss, how maybe there wasn’t even any intent behind it, but Fionn swears he can still feel Harry’s breath against his ear and his hand, big and soft touching the curve of Fionn’s neck. 

No.

Fionn breaks out into a run again, like he can leave all of those memories behind. The wide grin on Harry’s face when he’d seen the cast list at the beginning, happy to have a part at all, Fionn had thought. The smirk on his face when he’d flopped down next to Fionn at the first rehearsal even though they didn’t know each other. The countless times he’d taken the locker next to Fionn’s and paraded around in nothing but his underwear. How he’d snagged Fionn’s number and how Fionn had caved and texted him back every time. The exact number of times Fionn had jerked off after Harry touched his neck. 

The stitch is worse when he finally gets home, and he slips in through the back door and takes the stairs on tip toe, two at a time. 

His sides still ache by the time he’s perched on the tiny landing outside his bedroom window. He stares down at the joint, the end of it glowing in the dim light from his bedroom. It’s shitty weed but it’s still something, he thinks, sucking in a lungful of smoke and holding it in for as long as he can, his lungs and throat burning with it. 

It’s wild to think about a year from now, how the spring play hasn’t even been decided yet but by this time next year it’ll be over. Fionn won’t have another one looming, not unless he goes to college. He will, if his parents have anything to do with it, but it won’t be the same. He thinks about last year, how he’d kissed Barry and gone home still drunk and took a shower so hot that his skin was pink for an hour after. 

He can feel his phone buzzing in his pocket, first with a phone call and then a text. Barry, probably. Or Tom. Definitely not Harry, and either way, it doesn’t matter. Fionn’s not going anywhere. Not tonight. Not anywhere but his own bed. 

He sits outside the window until his head feels fuzzy and his ass is numb, the cold seeping through his hoodie. Everything’s quiet when he stumbles back in, cursing softly when he hits his funny bone on the window frame. He knows he should shower. If he doesn’t, his sheets’ll smell like weed and his mom will give him that disappointed look from across the table at dinner. But everything feels syrupy slow and the buzz under his skin is quiet and all Fionn can make himself do is fall into bed, phone still in his pocket, phone call and texts still unanswered. 

-

It takes a minute for everything to sharpen when Fionn wakes up. His mouth tastes terrible and there’s the ghost of a headache pulsing at his temples and his jeans are beyond uncomfortable. He blinks against the sun streaming through the window that he’d left open the night before. He stretches out on the mattress, hands slipping under his pillow and feeling the sharp edge of the card his mom put there. The prospect of moving towards the shower is more appealing than reading it, so Fionn drags himself up, kicks his sneakers off and pads into the bathroom.

The mirror’s fogged over and everything is slick and humid, and Fionn groans internally, hopes that Hattie left some hot water. 

There are angry red lines on the insides of his thighs when he pulls his jeans off, the seams firmly imprinted on his skin. Fionn traces them lightly and resists the urge to dig his fingernails in just to make them last a little while longer. 

He stays in the shower until the water’s gone cold and his fingers are wrinkled and pruny. He wonders how long he can get away with radio silence before he’s forced to check his phone. It’s unlikely that Tom or Barry will show up at his house, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Still, he lets the screen stay black until he’s shut back in his bedroom, towel firmly around his waist and hair damp. 

The voicemail’s from Harry and it gives Fionn a head rush so intense that he sways in place, tiny black dots briefly crowding his field of vision. He feels like he’s just run the six blocks from school again, only this time at top speed, set a new record for himself. 

He shoves the phone under his pillow and pulls out the card. 

_Fionn,_ his mom’s written in cursive at the top, and it always reminds Fionn of how obsessed he was with her handwriting when he was little, how she’d always just shake her head and tell him it was Catholic school and her handwriting wasn’t that nice. 

_You’re probably tired of hearing how proud of you we are, I’ll tell you again anyway. We’d be proud of whatever you decided to do, but watching you light up on stage makes us so proud we could burst. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Dad snuck the video camera in just to get the end. We are in awe of what you do and can’t believe you only have a year left._

At the bottom they’ve both drawn themselves, his dad bald and smiling and his mom with the haircut she’s had for Fionn’s whole life. 

He knows this is just the beginning of a drawn out end. That from here on out, everything will be a blur, his parents and his friends sentimental about things that haven’t even happened yet. He picks at the edge of his towel where it’s digging into his waist and runs his thumb along the soft roll of skin there. 

The voicemail is making him itchy under his skin again, and Fionn knows that he’ll just spend the rest of the day thinking about it if he doesn’t listen to it. It’ll be a waste of a day and he has studying to do, AP tests looming and he knows they’re important in a far-off kind of way.

He knows all of this, but he gets dressed instead, fresh hoodie and the jeans that he has to roll up because they’re too long and runs down the stairs, the bannister wobbly beneath his hand. He bypasses the kitchen and heads straight out the front door, closing it softly behind him and jogging down the front path so he doesn’t have to hear anyone call after him or feel the curl of guilt in his stomach when he keeps going.

It’s still too cold for just a sweatshirt, really, so he keeps up the jog for another block, his knees aching each time his feet hit the pavement, only slowing when the stitch in his side from the night before threatens to come back. 

Jack’s the only one in the costume shop when Fionn slips in, his costume on its requisite hanger in his hands. He’s been through this enough times that he knows better than to hand it over rumpled. 

“Surprised you weren’t the first one to hand it in last night,” Jack says, sorting through what look like feather boas, “high tailing it for the cast party’s not like you.”

Fionn bites at his bottom lip when he hands it over, Jack looking at him appraisingly.

“Nah,” he says, taking a step back from the tangle of feathers Jack’s ensconced in, “just tired, you know? You go to one cast party you’ve gone to them all, right?”

Jack laughs at that, hanging Fionn’s costume on the rack behind him. Fionn can see Harry’s hanging next to his, elaborate in comparison. Weirdly fitting, Fionn thinks. 

“Can’t really argue with that. I do miss them, though.”

Fionn rolls his eyes.   
“This is the first year you haven’t been to one,” he says, and Jack just flips him off in response. 

“And I can’t imagine you haven’t been to better parties since you graduated.”

“Don’t underestimate the experience of high school parties, young Fionn,” he says, and Fionn doesn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes again.

“Like I said, once you’ve been to one you’ve been to them all,” he says, even though he knows it’s a lie, because last year was different. 

Last year he slipped up, let himself get lost in it, the room temperature Rolling Rock and the cheap vodka Jack’s girlfriend brought making his head swirly and warm. He doesn’t remember much, just stretching out on the questionably clean carpet in her basement and pretending to make a snow angel right before he rolled on top of Barry and kissed him, Barry’s fingers digging into his hips for a split second before letting go.

“Whatever you say,” Jack says, shrugging, and Fionn takes that as his cue to leave, his phone heavy in his pocket, the weight of Harry’s voicemail impossible to ignore. 

“Later,” Fionn says over his shoulder, and Jack just gives him a distracted wave, already absorbed in the task at hand. 

He pulls his phone out once he’s outside, and it’s like he’s on autopilot, his fingers shaking. It takes three tries to type in his passcode correctly, and he spends another block letting the screen fade to black over and over again, his finger hovering over Harry’s name. 

It takes him long enough that he’s halfway home by the time he forces himself to hit play and bring his phone up to his ear. 

There’s just murmured noise at first, and it sounds like every party Fionn’s ever been to, just from a distance. For a second Fionn wonders if it was just a mistake, that Harry didn’t mean to call him and that it’s just thirty seconds of white noise. It keeps going and Fionn can hear muffled shouts in the background before Harry starts to talk, voice low and slurred. 

“Fionn,” he starts, “Fionnly, we’re waiting for you,” he hiccups, “well. Mostly, I got started because I wanted to be druuuuuunk around you. ‘M drunk now so you can come. Okay, I’m waiting for you. Okaaaaay Fionnly.”

Fionn plays it five more times. 

He imagines that he can pick out Barry’s voice in the background and Tom’s high laughter. He turns the volume all the way up and presses his phone to his ear and listens to the lilt of Harry’s voice and tries not to let him think about what it all means.   
Nothing. 

He tells himself nothing, because something would’ve already. There were opportunities that he doesn’t want to let himself dwell on, moments when he caught Harry grinning at him from across the stage, only for him to look away when he realized Fionn was looking back at him. 

Nothingnothingnothing.

Fionn’s sweating by the time he walks back up the front steps, his hoodie sticking uncomfortably to the back of his neck. 

His mom’s at the sink staring out at the back yard when he makes his way into the kitchen. He hovers in the doorway for a second before going over and wrapping her in a hug. 

“Thanks,” he says into her hair before he pulls back and goes to leave.

“Did you get your card?” she calls after him, but Fionn’s already halfway up the stairs, two at a time again and out of breath by the time he gets to the top.

“Yeah,” he calls back, but it feels like too little and he’s pretty sure she doesn’t hear him. 

He feels his phone buzz in his pocket when he shuts his door and flops down at his desk. His entire body feels like it seizes up even though he knows it’s not Harry. It’s not. 

It’s Tom, complaining about a hangover and begging to go get coffee.

 _That’s just going to make your hangover worse_ , Fionn types out, fingers still slightly sweaty against the screen, _remember when i threw up in dunkin last year?_

Tom starts typing right away, the three dots blinking up at Fionn. 

_Weak_ , he says, _meet me there in half an hour._

-

Tom’s not there yet, naturally. Fionn gets a small coffee and winces when it burns his tongue. He tugs his hat down a little further and hopes he looks different enough from last year that none of the employees will remember him throwing up at the corner table. 

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and sets it on the table. The screen stays black. No more from Harry, no apology from Tom for being late, not that Fionn’s expecting either of those things. 

Tom rolls in ten minutes later wearing last night’s clothes but only looking slightly less like a model. Fionn kicks at his shins under the table when he sits down clutching his iced coffee like a lifeline. 

“Don’t,” Tom croaks, sucking down half the coffee in one go, “you’re a dick.”

Fionn just laughs and takes a careful sip of his coffee. 

“How’m I a dick in this scenario?”

Tom glares at him and puts his coffee down before closing his eyes.

“You ditched everyone, asshole, and now you’re sitting across from me smirking and hangover free. Why’d you skip?”

Fionn shrugs. He can feel the hint of a blush creeping up his neck and hopes that Tom doesn’t notice it. 

“Barry said you deliberately dodged him and we all know you love a good party. Is it because of last year? Because you know no one cares, c’mon.”

Fionn rolls his eyes and leans back in his chair, tipping it back on two legs.

“Maybe I don’t like room temperature beer anymore,” he says, forcing a smile.

Tom shuts his eyes and sighs, slumping in his chair.

“I’m hungover and you put away half a case of High Life last weekend, don’t bullshit me, I’m too nauseous for that.”

“Told you,” Fionn says, “coffee’s the worst possible thing you could’ve gone for. And maybe I was tired. Really tried to give my all for the last performance.”

Tom leans forward gingerly and rests his cheek on the table. Fionn winces just thinking about all of the spills it’s endured. 

“I know you’re lying and I know it’s probably because of Harry.” 

His voice is slightly muffled and Fionn can’t stop thinking about how gross the tabletop is.

“You’re gonna need a decontamination shower when you unstick yourself from this table.”

Tom doesn’t lift his head up off the table, just raises a hand and flips him off.

“Didn’t answer my question. Was it Harry? I know you two’ve been dancing around each other.”

Fionn lets out a weird exhale that he means to be something else, maybe a feigned snort of disgust, but it sounds more defeated than anything else. 

“‘S what I thought,” Tom says, peeling his cheek off the table and grinning at Fionn.

“Then why’d you ask?” 

Fionn crosses his arms and wishes he could burrow inside his hoodie or under his baseball hat or anything. Anything to get him out of this Dunkin Donuts and away from Tom and the smirk on his face that tells Fionn he was too obvious all along, that Harry probably knows, too. 

“You know what they say about assumptions. Anyway, sometimes it’s fun just to watch you blush,” Tom says, slurping obnoxiously at his coffee. 

“Harry’s a nice guy. I approve.”

He winks at Fionn and Fionn hates it but he can feel the blush spreading across his cheeks.

“It’s not like that,” he says, and he hopes he sounds indifferent because he has to be in the end. 

Tom shrugs.

“It’d be okay if you wanted it to be,” he says, “like that, I mean.”

He’s looking at Fionn way too closely and Fionn can feel the walls closing in on him and he doesn’t know how to navigate this. Doesn’t know how to slot the curious look on Tom’s face and the way Harry used to lean in close into the universe he inhabits. 

He just shrugs because he doesn’t know what to say. He wants to tell Tom about the voicemail Harry left, drunk and permanently burned into Fionn’s memory. He’s trying to keep that stuff to himself though. He doesn’t like messy, and that--that would be messy.

Tom narrows his eyes at him and Fionn takes a sip of his coffee, lukewarm by now, and looks out the window instead. 

“Well,” Tom says, and Fionn can tell from his tone of voice that he’s finally going to drop it, “if you need a wingman, all you have to do is say the word. That’s what they call it, right?”

“Fuck off,” Fionn says, picking up his coffee and standing up, grinning down at Tom’s tired face. 

“Mmm,” Tom hums, “we’ll circle back on this but I’ll let you go for now.”

Fionn sticks his tongue out at him but his stomach is all knotted up when he walks out, scuffing his sneakers on the sidewalk. 

It hits him when he’s a block away that he doesn’t even know where Harry lives, not exactly. Logically Fionn knows he lives in the general area because they go to the same school, but suddenly he feels so stupid that he wants to curl up on the couch, head in his mom’s lap and never go outside again, because thinking that there could be anything between them when they aren’t even friends, when Fionn doesn’t even know where he lives. 

He circles the block a few more times and watches his shadow get shorter and shorter.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
